A six-legged robot-based system for humanitarian demining miss P. Gonzalez de Santos * , J.A. Cobano, E. Garcia, J. Estremera, M.A. Armada Industrial Automation Institute – CSIC, Ctra. Campo Real, Km. 0, 200-La Poveda, 28500 Arganda del Rey, Madrid, Spain Received 23 January 2006; accepted 23 April 2007 Abstract Removal of antipersonnel landmines is a worldwide problem currently requiring the use of new technologies such as im and efficient mobile robots. This paper is focused on the description of a system that relies on a walking robot that carries detect and locate antipersonnel landmines efficiently and effectively. The paper describes the main features of the walking tional equipment purposefully developed for this kind of application. The overall system consists of a sensor head that can landmine types, a manipulator to move the sensor head over large areas, a locating system based on a global positioning supervisor computer and the SILO6 walking robot used as the subsystems’ carrier. The whole system has been configured semi-autonomous mode with a view also to robot mobility and energy efficiency. Some of the achievements already accom this system are reported. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Legged robots; Walking robots; Demining robots; Landmine detection; Landmine location; Humanitarian demining 1. Introduction An antipersonnel landmine is a pyrotechnic instrument developed to be activated by an involuntary action of the enemy in order to put him out of combat. Although mines are scattered mainly in war actions, they remain active after deployment and retain the potential to kill animals and civ- ilians,especially children, or amputate their limbs, for a period of more than 50 years. Neutralization of landmines is accomplished in two dif- ferentways,military demining and humanitarian demin- ing, which present important differences.Military demining is performed during the conflict; its main purpose is to form a safe passageway for troops and it clears away 80% of the mines in the target area. On the other hand, humanitarian demining is a post-conflict activity thatis intended to restore the countryside and according to the UN should eliminate about 99.6% of the mines in the area. Detection and deactivation of antipersonnel land mine in humanitarian missions is thus a serious worldwide prob lem with greatimpacton politics,agriculture, tourism, industry,environment and, of course,human welfare. At last estimate, more than 110 million mines are deployed all around the world and cause about 26,000 casualties per year, not only in third-world countries but also in Eur- ope:Conflicts in the Balkans (Croatia, Bosnia and Herz- egovina,Kosovo and Slovenia) and in the former USSR (Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine) have left scattered mor than 3 million mines. The average cost for deactivating a landmine ranges from $300 to $1000. That means the total budget for clea ing up all mines could reach about $110 billion. One addi tionalproblem is that at the current average deactivation rate of 100,000 mines per year the total clean-up time is estimated as about 1100 years. Taking into accounthe large number of regionaland international military con- flicts that disperse more than 2 million mines per year, th problem is really far from solution. Both military and humanitarian demining have been accomplishedup to now by using human operators 0957-4158/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.mechatronics.2007.04.014 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 91 871 19 00; fax: +34 91 871 70 50. E-mail address: pgds@iai.csic.es (P. Gonzalez de Santos). Mechatronics 17 (2007) 417–430